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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 1879883" data-attributes="member: 158">Finally got a chance this week to dig into HARP. Some things you just can't appreciate without rolling up a character and playing. STILL haven't played it yet, but at least I went through some mock scenarios.My opinion was mixed; it was fascinating to sift through, and try to figure out, never having seen Rolemaster, which parts were similar to Rolemaster, and which parts were brand-new. It definitely seems like it plays smoother than I had been led to believe - and Rolemaster style percentile rolls were definitely different from what I imagined (At first I had thought them more like CoC or Runequest). What I do like, is the piecemeal approach to building a character through feats and skills (like what Mutants and Masterminds does for superheroes, this does for fantasy). I could build pretty much anything I wanted to similar to a D&D 3E character, through the skills and talents, albeit slower than such is given in D&D. At first I was thinking the Development Points (DP's) were excessive, but then realized they were nowhere near enough! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Good balance overall, however, and much finer gradations of success, not just through the percentile system, but through the two or three different means of resoution mechanics. What I DON'T like, is the Percentage system of success - it really bugged me the way it worked, and I can't put my finger solidly on why. Perhaps it's the examples I read, because it seemed like to figure out what percentage of something you've accomplished, it maps out directly to the result on your percentile roll, with no modifiers for skill, which doesn't seem right.The only other thing that bugs me slightly is the dependence on two scores instead of one for skills; "dependence" might be a strong word, but it may take a while to get used to skill defaults in this system.Other than that, the only other thing that put me off were the number of modifiers for combat; for the sake of excitement as well as accuracy, there seemed to be an overwhelming number of them. The final thing to HARP is the flavor - forget Hackmaster, THIS is the game that catapults me to the feelings I had when I used to play 1st edition D&D - kind of a nostalgia/novelty hybrid feeling that had me interested in reading the rules and wanting to set something up with them for people to play. An Idea is forming in my mind about a series of one-shots of different game systems - Some of my players are already wanting me to run a Continuum game for them, I wonder how they'd feel about a HARP one-shot or two-shot. Hmmm...But overall, the system screams playable at first glance, as well as amazingly customizeable, and much lower-power than D&D gets at higher levels.</blockquote>

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